Finding the Names — Installment 52 (Roll 7: New Orleans Inward Manifests, 1832) — FREE

Finding the Names is a free series that transcribes America's slave-trade records from the National Archives' own scans, name by name, so descendants can find their families. Every installment is free — please share it.

Installment 52 — Roll 7, images 121–240 transcribed name by name by hand: 548 more entries (542 named, 6 unnamed) on 54 manifests, 153 pages. The series now holds 31,350 transcribed entries.

The brig Ajax packet left open at the end of Installment 51 is closed here, to the person. Her first sheet (image 120, in the last installment) holds 31 numbered entries; the sheets in this one — images 122 (9), 124 (9), and 128 (23) — bring the numbered entries to 72, exactly her Norfolk certificate's total, and a clerk's own pencil tally in the corner of the Howell sheet reads "49 / 23 / 72." The versos carry the sequel: on 7 June 1832 the whole consignment was "to be Shipped to Appalousas" — Opelousas — that afternoon. A third Ajax packet in this installment (August 1832, master William Rollins) reconciles too: her landing permission's "Fifty nine Slaves" is the 45 unstruck entries of the long Foster sheet — 46 lines, one struck through — plus 14 more on a second manifest.

On the versos of two brig Ariel manifests, Inspector William Vandegriff noted what the captain told him: the people aboard "was for the Governor of the State of Louisiana." The barque Hercules carries a harder story: John Johnson had absconded from New Orleans, shipped himself as a freeman on one of his owner's brigs out of Baltimore, and was being brought back "to be delivered to his owner." And the brig Bourne's single passenger, John Erceralls [?], has for a certificate only this: "The within Servant belongs to Judge Waggaman."

Elsewhere: Minna of the ship Nianza, whose one-woman manifest records that she "absconded before the ship sailed from New York" — a paper trail for someone who never sailed at all. Four people on the schooner Elizabeth reported not on board, three of their names struck through in full. The brig Crawford's people are filed twice — a consolidated list of 40 and six separate Charleston manifests, both printed, with names spelled differently between them. The schooner Splendid names seven people against a certificate of "One in number." The brig Tribune's 107 are exact everywhere, with Levenia Washington and Rachel Ann Chener marked "Sick." Harvey, age 5, travelled alone from Mobile on the mail stage and mail boat. And the schooner Mobile's table carries a boy of 14, 4 ft 2 in, shipped by Elias Reed — entry No. 1, with no name ever written for him anywhere on the form.

Includes a searchable CSV name list of all 548 entries (name, vessel, age, shipper, and more). Honest about gaps: illegible and conflicting entries are flagged, never silently fixed.

With Installments 1–52 the series now holds 31,350 transcribed entries. Start with the free guide, "Finding the Names," and the free Complete Set, which gathers everything so far in one download.

— Okey and Susan Barker, Trails End